The need to store digital files, documents, pictures, images and other data continues to increase rapidly. In connection with the electronic storage of data, systems incorporating more than one storage device have been devised. In general, using a number of storage devices in a coordinated fashion in order to store data can increase the total storage volume of the system. In addition, data can be distributed across the multiple storage devices such that data will not be irretrievably lost if one of the storage devices (or in some cases more than one storage device) fails. An additional advantage that can be achieved by coordinating the operation of a number of individual storage devices is improved data access and/or storage times.
Storage systems or storage systems that provide at least some integration of individual storage devices, such as JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks), SBOD (Switched Bunch of Disks) or RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) systems have been developed. Storage systems are typically deployed as a number of individual disk drives or other storage devices within an enclosure to present an integrated component to the user. In addition to the individual storage devices, the enclosure may contain one or more power supplies and one or more cooling devices. Integrated storage systems may also include one or more controllers that can be used to control the distribution of data across the individual storage devices.
In many storage systems, monitoring and management of the storage system by administrators using external interfaces interconnected to the storage system by a network are possible. For example, an external interface comprising a web browser in communication with a storage system over an out-of-band network (i.e. a network that is not used to transfer data for storage on storage devices included in the storage system) can be used to provide an administrator with information related to the status of the storage system. As another example, an external interface comprising a host bus adaptor interconnected to the storage system by an in-band network (i.e. by the network that is typically used transfer data for storage on storage devices included in the storage system) can be used to provide an administrator with information related to the status of the storage system. However, storage systems have not been capable of tracking different external interfaces logged in through both out-of-band and in-band networks, or of tracking the information that has been delivered to external interfaces. In addition, these storage systems have been incapable of allowing a root user or primary administrator to set permissions and otherwise control access to the storage subsystem information from different channels or networks through a unified control facility.
In order to facilitate control and management of integrated storage systems, administrators have been provided with various tools. For example, information related to events associated with a storage system or the status of the storage system can be delivered to external interfaces for review by administrators. In a typical storage system arrangement, the information desired by an administrator or other external user is delivered from the storage system to an external interface in response to polling by an external application. However, because the storage systems have had no way of tracking what information has already been delivered to an external interface, the entire event log is typically sent to the external interface. As a result, the amount of time required to transmit and parse the information can be significant. In addition, high network traffic and high CPU utilization at the storage system and the external interface result from the large data structures being transmitted. These problems can become even more disruptive where a large number of external interfaces are requesting information for a storage system.